The Magnetic North Part 44

And he took steps that it should be, for he began stealing away Kaviak's few cherished possessions--his amulet, his top from under the bunk, his boats from out the water-bucket, wherewith to mitigate the barrenness of the Yukon tree, and to provide a pleasant surprise for the Esquimer who mourned his playthings as gone for ever. Of an evening now, after sleep had settled on Kaviak's watchful eyes, the Boy worked at a pair of little snow-shoes, helped out by a ball of sinew he had got from Nicholas. Mac bethought him of the valuable combination of zoological and biblical instruction that might be conveyed by means of a Noah's Ark. He sat up late the last nights before the 25th, whittling, chipping, pegging in legs, sharpening beaks, and inking eyes, that the more important animals might be ready for the Deluge by Christmas.

The Colonel made the ark, and O'Flynn took up a collection to defray the expense of the little new mucklucks he had ordered from Nicholas.

They were to come "_sure_ by Christmas Eve," and O'Flynn was in what he called "a froightful fanteeg" as the short day of the 24th wore towards night, and never a sign of the one-eyed Pymeut. Half a dozen times O'Flynn had gone beyond the stockade to find out if he wasn't in sight, and finally came back looking intensely disgusted, bringing a couple of white travellers who had arrived from the opposite direction; very cold, one of them deaf, and with frost-bitten feet, and both so tired they could hardly speak. Of course, they were made as comfortable as was possible, the frozen one rubbed with snow and bandaged, and both given bacon and corn-bread and hot tea.

"You oughtn't to let yourself get into a state like this," said Mac, thinking ruefully of these strangers' obvious inability to travel for a day or two, and of the Christmas dinner, to which Benham alone had been bidden, by a great stretch of hospitality.

"That's all very well," said the stranger, who shouted when he talked at all, "but how's a man to know his feet are going to freeze?"

"Ye see, sorr," O'Flynn explained absent-mindedly, "Misther MacCann didn't know yer pardner was deaf."

This point of view seemed to thaw some of the frost out of the two wayfarers. They confided that they were Salmon P. Hardy and Bill Schiff, fellow-pa.s.sengers in the _Merwin_, "locked in the ice down below," and they'd mined side by side back in the States at Cripple Creek. "Yes, sir, and sailed for the Klond.y.k.e from Seattle last July."

And now at Christmas they were hoping that, with luck, they might reach the new Minook Diggings, seven hundred miles this side of the Klond.y.k.e, before the spring rush. During this recital O'Flynn kept rolling his eyes absently.

"Theyse a quare noise without."

"It's the wind knockin' down yer chimbly," says Mr. Hardy encouragingly.

"It don't sound like Nich'las, annyhow. May the divil burrn him in tarment and ile fur disappoyntin' th' kid."

A rattle at the latch, and the Pymeut opened the door.

"Lorrd love ye! ye're a jool, Nich'las!" screamed O'Flynn; and the mucklucks pa.s.sed from one to the other so surrept.i.tiously that for all Kaviak's wide-eyed watchfulness he detected nothing.

Nicholas supped with his white friends, and seemed bent on pa.s.sing the night with them. He had to be bribed with tobacco and a new half-dollar to go home and keep Christmas in the bosom of his family. And still, at the door, he hesitated, drew back, and laid the silver coin on the table.

"No. It nights."

"But it isn't really dark."

"Pretty soon heap dark."

"Why, I thought you natives could find your way day or night?"

"Yes. Find way."

"Then what's the matter?"

"Pymeut no like dark;" and it was not until Mac put on his own snow-shoes and offered to go part of the way with him that Nicholas was at last induced to return home.

The moment Kaviak was ascertained to be asleep, O'Flynn displayed the mucklucks. No mistake, they were dandies! The Boy hung one of them up, by its long leg, near the child's head at the side of the bunk, and then conferred with O'Flynn.

"The Colonel's made some little kind o' sweet-cake things for the tree.

I could spare you one or two."

"Divil a doubt Kaviak'll take it kindly, but furr mesilf I'm thinkin' a pitaty's a dale tastier."

There was just one left in camp. It had rolled behind the flour-sack, and O'Flynn had seized on it with rapture. Where everybody was in such need of vegetable food, n.o.body under-estimated the magnificence of O'Flynn's offering, as he pushed the pitaty down into the toe of the muckluck.

"Sure, the little haythen'll have a foine Christian Christmas wid that same to roast in the coals, begorra!" and they all went to bed save Mac, who had not returned, and the Boy, who put on his furs, and went up the hill to the place where he kept the Christmas-tree lodged in a cotton-wood.

He shook the snow off its branches, brought it down to the cabin, decorated it, and carried it back.

Mac, Salmon P. Hardy, and the frost-bitten Schiff were waked, bright and early Christmas morning, by the Boy's screaming with laughter.

The Colonel looked down over the bunk's side, and the men on the buffalo-skin looked up, and they all saw Kaviak sitting in bed, holding in one hand an empty muckluck by the toe, and in the other a half-eaten raw potato.

"Keep the rest of it to roast, anyhow, or O'Flynn's heart will be broken."

So they deprived Kaviak of the gnawed fragment, and consoled him by helping him to put on his new boots.

When the Little Cabin contingent came in to breakfast, "h.e.l.lo! what you got up on the roof?" says Potts.

"Foot of earth and three feet o' snow!"

"But what's in the bundle!"

"Bundle?" echoes the Boy.

"If you put a bundle on the roof, I s'pose you know what's in it," says the Colonel severely.

The occupants of the two cabins eyed each other with good-humoured suspicion.

"Thank you," says the Boy, "but we're not takin' any bundles to-day."

"Call next door," advised the Colonel.

"You think we're tryin' to jolly you, but just go out and see for yourself--"

"No, sir, you've waked the wrong pa.s.senger!"

"They're tryin' it on _us_," said Potts, and subsided into his place at the breakfast-table.

During the later morning, while the Colonel wrestled with the dinner problem, the Boy went through the thick-falling snow to see if the tree was all right, and the dogs had not appropriated the presents. Half-way up to the cotton-wood, he glanced back to make sure Kaviak wasn't following, and there, sure enough, just as the Little Cabin men had said--there below him on the broad-eaved roof was a bundle packed round and nearly covered over with snow. He went back eyeing it suspiciously.

Whatever it was, it seemed to be done up in sacking, for a bit stuck out at the corner where the wind struck keen. The Boy walked round the cabin looking, listening. n.o.body had followed him, or nothing would have induced him to risk the derision of the camp. As it was, he would climb up very softly and lightly, and n.o.body but himself would be the wiser even if it was a josh. He brushed away the snow, touching the thing with a mittened hand and a creepy feeling at his spine. It was precious heavy, and hard as iron. He tugged at the sacking. "Jee! if I don't b'lieve it's meat." The lid of an old cardboard box was bound round the frozen ma.s.s with a string, and on the cardboard was written: "Moose and Christmas Greeting from Kaviak's friends at Holy Cross to Kaviak's friends by the Big Chimney."

"H'ray! h'ray! Come out, you fellas! Hip! hip! hurrah!" and the Boy danced a breakdown on the roof till the others had come out, and then he hurled the moose-meat down over the stockade, and sent the placard flying after. They all gathered round Mac and read it.

"Be the Siven!"

"Well, I swan!"

"Don't forget, Boy, you're not takin' any."

"Just remember, if it hadn't been for me it might have stayed up there till spring."

"You run in, Kaviak, or you'll have no ears."